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The productivity of Indonesian book publishers is quite good, when it comes to the quantity of new books could be displayed every month in the Jakarta-based bookstores such as Gramedia, Toko Buku Gunung Agung, Kinokuniya, and Aksara. From the initial research, there are more than a hundred new titles could be sold every month in a bookstore. Frequently, people tend to feel interested to buy a book because some of reasons that related to the contents of book starting from the book cover, illustration, the topics, story ideas, and even the trend of literature.

After all, along with the quantity of new book releases, there would be more challenges to every publisher that possibly to deal with. The opposite of ‘quantity’ that most significant is ‘quality’. Yes, the quality is hardly gained and maintained. This problem related to the role of book as a creative economy product which the quality should be kept in terms of ethics and aesthetics in literature, story ideas, competitive edge, and how to communicate with the audiences through branding process that is likely to be implemented such as packaging, type of paper, layout design, artworks / illustrations, stylistic, and even book pricing. Whether the book publishers get the standards of these things or not is the reason why the literary agency could help the Indonesian publishers in the future.

Peanuts Cartoon shows why we need literary agent

Literary agency is a type of company with its function as a liaison between the writers and the potential publishers, it is about how they could give the critics and opinions or even in editing the manuscripts so it would seem ‘ready to publish’. Furthermore, the literary agency should understand in making or seeing the trend of literature in domestic or overseas because it will be linked to the integrated marketing communications strategy such as branding process. If the book publishers are denying, “Why on earth do we work together with the literary agency if we already have our people in editorial and marketing division?” That is optional thing that leads to the welfare of publishing industry workers. It is your choice, capitalist. How could the editorial work programs reach the designated target if the publishers could not keep the quality? Collaborating with the literary agency is one of the best solutions to keep the quality of publishers and the books. Imagine if you worked for a company from the client side but you have no vendors at all to support your company’s work program that were made. Are you sure you can do it? Maybe yes, but it would not be maximum. And your job surely would be stressful.

We often to find the poor quality in Indonesian books and it was not like we expected. Starting from the type of paper and the bad printing, the artworks on book cover and illustrations that could have been better, or even the main problem on the book itself that associated to the quality of story / object / stylistic because these elements are the parts of aesthetics in literature that could be offered to the readers. The editor’s expertise in selecting a thousands manuscripts one by one that received by the publishers is a challenging task if the quantity of manuscript selections is not being well-balanced with the custody of quality.

As an employee who works at client side, the editors and assistants had the limitation as well as marketing communication persons in non-agency companies. They need collaboration with the agencies to reach the target that leads to the sales enhancement. If we saw the marketing communications division activities, we would hear sometime that they have some meetings with some agencies in order to support their work programs. Usually they are going to do a brainstorming and WIP meeting for the 360° marketing communication activities such as the development of TVC, billboard, radio spot, POS (point of sales materials), newsletter, digital PR (utilizing buzzers or key opinion leaders; creative blogging), social media, press conference, events, content marketing, etc.

Those activities must be impossible to do independently by the marketing communications division without any vendor or agency to help them. In my opinion, it is the same thing that happened with editorial division. In custody of quality from many dimensions that well explained above, editorial needs collaboration with literary agency so the future of published books could be more inspiring, informative, creating the new trends. We believed that the editorial division is one of the most important departments in every publisher. They are a spearhead in creating sales enhancement every hour, month, and year!

Publishing a book is not that easy

It is very unfortunate when we found so many considerations in buying decision process at the local bookstore. Especially towards the translated books that seemed often re-illustrated on its cover and sometimes using the bad quality papers. The problem could be fatal when the illustration is not match that leads to the writer’s personal brand and the translation sounds weird sometimes. So finally we decided to the original book instead of buying the translated book. The different problems could happen on the Indonesian books, where the main problem usually happened on the contents of story and author’s stylistic that less interesting for the readers. Plus with misplaced cover art and the shallowness of story details caused by the lack of research. Basically, the authors need a deeper research for story development.

J.K Rowling with her first book, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone

Seeing this problem, we will think about the integrity in publisher’s side. Could they keep a quality with the limited time? Some of us will hesitate to say ‘yes’. Therein lies the role of the literary agency. One of the successful stories that ever made in the history of modern world literature came from Christopher Little, a London-based literary agency. Do you still remember Harry Potter? Before becoming the most popular book series in the world, J.K Rowling has applied Harry Potter’s original manuscripts to Bloomsbury (UK) via her literary agent, Christopher Little. It took a long time to create the Harry Potter book series that we have been reading after all these times. There are so many lessons in creative writing process through her literary agent that could be so challenging for Rowling. That is why she has got her characteristic on writing style nowadays. We sure it is not easy to make a masterpiece like Harry Potter though. It shows that the literary agent has got a lot of benefits for publishers, authors, and readers.

There is a possibility about the existence of literary agencies that could be promising for business in the future as well as the free trade system gives a chance to the local authors in order to go international as well as the authors in overseas already made their own existence in Indonesia. Meanwhile, another possibility that could happen is the existence of in-house literary agency in some of big publishers such as Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Gagas Media, Mizan, and many more due to wider business opportunity and efficiency reasons. The restricted competition to develop the best work could be the wide open door for the literary agency business opportunities, because someone’s ideas will always reach the distance no matter how far it is. Back to our perspective, whether we choose to believe and support it or not.